Not an Angel
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: Lily Luna's parents had made a mistake when they named her. She was sure that they had had the name prepared long before they saw her and could judge how well it suited her, and when she had been born, they simply slapped it on her like a label on a jar. Written for Tech Discovery, for Camp Potter.


Author's Notes: Written for the fifth Tech Discovery assignment on Camp Potter – _write about Lily Luna Potter_.

Warnings: Insanity of the murderous variety.

)O(

Lily Luna's parents had made a mistake when they named her. She was sure that they had had the name prepared long before they saw her and could judge how well it suited her, and when she had been born, they simply slapped it on her like a label on a jar. When describing her, people threw around words like _creepy_, and in the few interactions she'd had with Muggles, their half-formed insult _witchy_, and yet she had been named after two people who her family considered practically angels. Her brothers, at least, had been given the dignity of only being named after the deceased, and then after flawed people as well. When Harry told stories about Severus Snape or Sirius Black, tinged as they might be with nostalgia, there was always an acknowledgement that they were not perfect. Not so with Lily Evans, and certainly not so with Luna Lovegood.

Lily Evans was all but a literal angel – a guardian from beyond the grave who had saved Harry Potter's life and the lives of so many along with it. No one could ever have been expected to live up to a namesake like that. That might not have been such a terrible name on its own, really, because no one would really have thought that the younger Lily should be like the older one.

But then her parents just _had_ to slap "Luna" on, didn't they? They just _had_ to make her Lily _Luna_ and give her someone real and alive to have to live up to. Luna Lovegood was the kind of person that Lily Luna's parents wanted for a daughter. They wanted someone insightful and sweet and harmlessly quirky. They wanted someone who could tout the motto '_Be yourself_' and '_don't care what other people think_'. And who could blame them? What parents wouldn't want such a lovable little girl, especially in the wake of two rambunctious boys?

But her parents hadn't gotten a little Luna Lovegood for a daughter. They'd been cursed with a sullen little girl who pulled the wings off butterflies instead of going on hunts for imaginary creatures. She had her fair share of insight, but she was punished when she shared it: Harry and Ginny didn't want to hear the things she had to say about their wretched parenting and horrible sons, no matter how true.

So she learned to keep silent and not to use the real explanation – _you don't like it when I am _– when they asked her why she wasn't more like Luna.

In one of the many ironies of her life – irony being one thing that Lily Luna valued – Luna Lovegood was one of the few people who would never have asked questions like _why aren't you more like…?_ When Lily Luna was quite young, Luna Lovegood had been the only person who she liked; she adored being sent to her house for afternoons when her parents wanted to be rid of her, and she balked when it was time to go home. But with time, Lily Luna came to harbour a resentment for her, not only because she had given Lily Luna her baggage-ridden name, but because she was the only person who Lily Luna had ever met that seemed to understand anything about her, and never once did she do a thing to help her. In the disillusionment that Lily found increasing in her every year, every month, every day, every _hour_ that she spent in her parents' home, Luna Lovegood turned from a benevolent fairy godmother to yet another bland, stupid person who didn't understand who she was, except that she was _Harry Potter's daughter_. Luna Lovegood, in fact, became a doubly hateful figure in Lily Luna's mind, because she had pretended to care about her, and she didn't. Lily Luna despised falsehood.

So when she lay in bed at night and plotted, when she quietly considered how to fix the world, how to make it the sort of place she really wanted to live in instead of the miserable black hole that she had been forced into, when she stroked her wand and imagined that flash of green light, the two _beautiful_ words that would improve her world with every utterance, Luna Lovegood was always on her list of those she would have to kill. Her mother. Her father. Her brothers. Luna Lovegood. And then things would be so much better.

)O(

_Fin_


End file.
